Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 7 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #2, The mind is very clever Question 1

Question 1

WHAT CAN I DO WITH A BEGGAR?

WHETHER I GIVE HIM A RUPEE OR NOT,

HE WILL REMAIN A BEGGAR ALL THE SAME.

THE beggar is not the problem. If the beggar was the problem then everybody who passes by would feel the same. If the beggar was the problem then beggars would have disappeared long ago. The problem is within you: your heart feels it. Try to understand it.

The mind interferes immediately whenever the heart feels love, the mind immediately interferes. The mind says, "Whether you give him something or not, he will remain the beggar all the same.'' Whether he remains the beggar or not is not your responsibility, but if your heart feels to do something, do it. Don't try to avoid. The mind is trying to avoid the situation. The mind says. "What is going to happen? He will remain the beggar, so there is no need to do anything." You have missed an opportunity where your love could have flown.

If the beggar has decided to be a beggar, you cannot do anything. You may give him: he may throw it. That is for him to decide.

The mind is very clever.

Then the question, it says:

WHY ARE THERE BEGGARS AT ALL?

Because there is no love in the human heart.

But again, the mind interferes:

HAVE NOT THE RICH TAKEN AWAY FROM THE POOR?

SHOULD NOT THE POOR TAKE BACK

WHAT THE RICH HAVE STOLEN FROM HIM?

Now you are forgetting the beggar and the heartache that you felt. Now the whole thing is becoming political, economical. Now the problem is no more of the heart: it is of the mind. And mind has created the beggar. It is the cunningness, the calculativeness of the mind that has created the beggar. There are cunning people, very calculative: they have become rich. There are innocent people, not so calculative, not so cunning: they have become the poor.

You can change the society -- in Soviet Russia they have changed. That makes no difference. Now the old categories have disappeared -- the poor and the rich -- but the ruler and the ruled, a new category, has come up, Now the cunning are the rulers and the innocent are the ruled. Before, the innocent used to be poor and the cunning used to be rich. What can you do?

Unless the division between mind and heart is dissolved, unless humanity starts living through the heart and not through the mind, the classes are going to remain. The names will change, and the misery is going to continue.

The question is very relevant, very meaningful, significant "What can I do with a beggar?" Beggar is not the question. The question is you and your heart. Do something, whatsoever you can do, and don't try to throw the responsibility on the rich. Don't try to throw the responsibility on history. Don't try to throw the responsibility on the economic structure. Because that is secondary if humanity remains cunning and calculative it is going to be repeated again and again and again.

What can you do for it? You are a small part of the total. Whatsoever you do will not change the situation -- but it will change you. It may not change the beggar if you give something to him, but the very gesture, that you shared whatsoever you could, will change you. And that is important. And if this goes on -- the revolution of the heart -- people who feel, people who look at another human being as an end in itself if this goes on increasing, one day, the poor people will disappear, the poverty will disappear -- and it will not be replaced by a new category of exploitation.

Up to now all the revolutions have failed, because the revolutionaries have not been able to see the basic cause why there is poverty. They are looking only at superficial causes. Immediately they say, "Some people have exploited him, that's why their possibility. This is the cause; that's why there is poverty.

But why were some people able to exploit? Why could they not see? Why could they not see that they are gaining nothing and this man is losing all? They may accumulate wealth, but they are killing life all around. Their wealth is nothing but blood. Why can they not see it? The cunning mind has created explanations there also.

The cunning mind says. "People are poor because of their karma. In the past lives they have done something wrong, that s why they are suffering. I am rich because I have done good deeds, so I am enjoying the fruit." This is also mind. And Marx sitting in the British Museum is also a mind: and thinking about what is the basic cause of poverty comes to feel that there are people who exploit. But these people will be there always. Unless cunningness disappears completely, it is not a question of changing the structure of the society. It is a question of changing the whole structure of human personality.

What can you do? You can change, you can throw out the rich people -- they will come back from the back door. They were cunning. In fact, those who are throwing, they are also very cunning; otherwise they cannot throw. The rich people may not be able to come from the back door, but the people who call themselves revolutionaries, communists, socialists -- they will sit on the throne and then they will start exploiting. And they will exploit more dangerously because they have proved themselves more cunning than the rich. By throwing out the rich, they have proved one thing absolutely: that they are more cunning than the rich. The society will be in the hands of more cunning people.

And remember, if someday some other revolutionaries are born -- which are bound to be, because again people will start feeling the exploitation is there, now it has taken a new form -- again there will be a revolution. But who will throw the past revolutionaries? Now more cunning people will be needed.

Whenever you are going to defeat a certain system, and you use the same means as the system has used for itself, just names will change, flags will change, the society will remain the same.

Enough of this befooling. The beggar is not the question: the question is you. Don't be cunning, don't be clever. Don't try to say that this is his karma -- you don't know anything about karma. That is just a hypothesis to explain certain things which are unexplained, to explain certain things which cause heartache. Once you accept the hypothesis, you are relieved of the burden. Then you can remain rich and the poor can remain poor and there is no problem. The hypothesis functions as a buffer.

That's why in India poverty has remained so ingrained and people have become so insensitive towards it. They have a certain theory which helps them. Just as you move in a car and the car has shock absorbers, the roughness of the road is not felt, the shock absorbers go on absorbing this hypothesis of karma is a great shock absorber. You come constantly against poverty, but there is a shock absorber the theory of karma. What can you do? It has nothing to do with yourself. You are enjoying your riches because of your virtues -- good deeds done in the past. And this man is suffering from his bad deeds.

There is in India a certain sect of Jainism, Tera-Panth. They are the extremist believers of this theory. They say, "Don't interfere, because he is suffering his past karmas. Don't interfere. Don't give him anything, because that will be an interference, and he could have suffered in a short time -- you will be delaying the process. He will have to suffer."

For example, a poor man you can give him enough to live at ease for a few years, but again the suffering will start. You can give him enough to live at ease in this life, but again in the next life the suffering will start. Where you stopped it, exactly from there the suffering will start again. So those who believe in the Tera-Panth, they go on saying don't interfere. Even if somebody is dying by the side of the road, you simply go on indifferent on your path. They say this is compassion; interfering, you delay the process.

What a great shock absorber.

In India people have become absolutely insensitive. A cunning theory protects them.

In the West they have found a new hypothesis: that it is because the rich have exploited -- so destroy the rich. Just look at it. Looking at a poor man, love starts rising in your heart. You immediately say this poor man is poor because of the rich. You have turned love into hate now hate arises towards the rich man. What game are you playing? Now you say. "Destroy the rich! Take everything back from them. They are the criminals." Now the beggar is forgotten; the heart is full of love no more. On the contrary, it is full of hate... and hate has created the society in which beggars exist. Now again hate is functioning in you. You will create a society in which categories may change, names may change, but there will be the ruled and the rulers, the exploited and the exploiters, the oppressors and the oppressed. It will not make much difference; it will remain the same. There will be masters and there will be slaves.

The only revolution possible is the revolution of the heart. When you see a beggar, remain sensitive. Don't allow any shock absorber to come between you and the beggar. Remain sensitive. It is difficult because you will start crying. It is difficult because it will be very, very uncomfortable. Share whatsoever you can share. And don't be worried whether he will remain a beggar or not -- you did whatsoever you could. And this will change you. This will give you a new being, closer to the heart and farther away from the mind. This is your inner transformation; and this is the only way.

If individuals go on changing in this way, there may sometime arise a society where people are so sensitive that they cannot exploit, where people have become so alert and aware that they cannot oppress, where people have become so loving that just to think of poverty, of slavery, is impossible.

Do something out of the heart, and don't fall a victim of theories.

The questioner goes on:

YOU HAVE SAID WE MUST MOVE TO THE OPPOSITE POLE;

WE MUST CHOOSE BOTH SCIENCE AND RELIGION.

RATIONALITY AND IRRATIONALITY, WEST AND EAST,

TECHNOLOGY AND SPIRITUALITY.

CAN I CHOOSE BOTH POLITICS AND MEDITATION?

CAN I CHOOSE TO CHANGE THE WORLD

AND TO CHANGE MYSELF AT THE SAME TIME?

CAN I BE A REVOLUTIONARY AND A SANNYASIN AT ONCE?

Yes, I have said again and again that one has to accept the polarities. But meditation is not a pole. Meditation is the acceptance of the polarities, and through that acceptance one transcends beyond the polarities. So there is no opposite to meditation. Try to understand.

You are sitting in your room full of darkness. Is darkness the opposite of light, or just the absence of light? If it is opposite to light, then it has its own existence. Does darkness have its own existence? Is it real in its own way, or is it Just the absence of light? If it has a reality of its own, then when you light a candle it will resist. It will try to put the candle off. It will fight for its own existence; it will resist. But it gives no resistance. It never fights, it can never put a small candle.... Vast darkness and a small candle, but the candle cannot be defeated by that vast darkness. The darkness may have ruled in that house for centuries, but you bring a small candle: the darkness cannot say, "I am centuries old and I will give a good fight." It simply disappears.

Darkness has no positive reality, it is simply the absence of light, so when you bring light it disappears. When you put the light off, it appears. In fact it never goes out and never comes in, because it cannot go out and cannot come in. Darkness is nothing but the absence of light. Light present, it is not there; light absent, it is there. It is absence.

Meditation is the inner light. It has no opposite, only absence.

The whole life is an absence of meditation, as you live it, the worldly life -- the life of power, prestige, ego, ambition, greed. And that is what politics is.

Politics is a very big word. It does not include only the so-called politicians, it includes all the worldly people, because whosoever is ambitious is a politician, and whosoever is struggling to reach somewhere is a politician. Wherever there is competition there is politics. Thirty students studying in the same class and calling themselves class fellows -- they are class enemies, because they are all competing, not fellows. They are all trying to overtake the other. They are all trying to get the gold medal, to come first. The ambition is there: they are already politicians.

Wherever there is competition and struggle there is politics. So the whole ordinary life is politics-oriented.

Meditation is like light when meditation comes politics disappears. So you cannot be meditative and political. That is impossible: you are asking for the impossible. Meditation is not one pole: it is absence of all conflict, all ambition, all ego-trips.

Let me tell you a very famous Sufi story. It happened

A Sufi said, "None can understand man until he realizes the connection between greed, obligement, and impossibility."

"This," said his disciple, "is a conundrum which I cannot understand."

The Sufi said, "Never look for understanding through conundrums when you can attain it through experience directly."

He took the disciple to a shop in the nearby market where robes were sold. "Show me your very best robe," said the Sufi to the shopkeeper, "for I am in a mood to spend excessively."

A most beautiful garment was produced, and an extremely high price was asked for it. "It is very much the kind of thing I would like," said the Sufi. "but I would like some sequins around the collar and a touch of fur trimming.

"Nothing easier," said the seller of the robes, "for I have just such a garment in the workroom of my shop.'' He disappeared for a few moments and then returned having added the fur and the sequins to the selfsame garment.

"And how much is this one?" asked the Sufi.

"Twenty times the price of the first one," said the shop-keeper.

"Excellent," said the Sufi. "I shall take both of them."

Now, the impossibility, because it is the selfsame garment. The Sufi was showing that greed has a certain impossibility in it impossibility is intrinsic to greed.

Now don't be too greedy, because this is the greatest greed there is to ask to be a politician and a meditator together, simultaneously. That is the greatest greed possible. You are asking to be ambitious and nontense. You are asking to fight, to be violent, to be greedy, and yet peaceful and relaxed. If it were possible then there would have been no need for sannyas, then there would have been no need for meditation.

You cannot have both. Once you start meditating, politics starts disappearing. With politics all the effects of it also disappear. The tense state, the worry, the anxiety, the anguish, the violence, the greed -- they all disappear. They are by-products of a political mind.

You will have to decide either you can be a politician or you can be a meditator. You cannot be both, because when meditation comes, the darkness disappears. This world, your world, is an absence of meditation. And when meditation comes, this world simply disappears like darkness.

That's why Patanjali, Shankara, and others who have known, go on saying that this world is illusory, not real. Illusory like darkness: appears to be real, when it is there, but once you bring light in, suddenly you become aware it was not real, it was unreal. Just look into darkness. How real it is. How real it looks. It is there surrounding you from everywhere. Not only that -- you are feeling afraid. The unreal creating fear. It can kill you, and it is not there!

Bring light. Keep somebody by the door to see whether or not he comes to see the darkness going out. Nobody ever sees darkness going out; nobody ever sees darkness coming in, It appears to be and it is not.

The so-called world of desire and ambition, politics, only appears to be and it is not. Once you meditate you start laughing about the whole nonsense, the whole nightmare that has disappeared.

But please don't try to do this impossible thing. If you try you will be in much conflict; you will become a split personality. "Can I choose both politics and meditation? Can I choose to change the world and to change myself at the same time?" Not possible.

In fact, you are the world. When you change yourself you have started to change the world -- and there is no other way. If you start changing others you will not be able to change yourself, and one who is not able to change himself cannot change anybody. He can only go on believing that he is doing great work, as your politicians go on believing.

Your so-called revolutionaries are all ill people, tense people, mad people -- insane -- but their insanity is such that if they are left to themselves they will go completely mad, so they put their insanity in some occupation. Either they start changing the society, reforming the society, doing this and that... changing the whole world. And their madness is such they cannot see the stupidity of it you have not changed yourself -- how can you change anybody else?

Start closer at home. First change yourself, first bring the light within yourself, then you will be capable.... In fact to say then there will be any capacity to change others is not right. In fact once you change yourself you become a source of infinite energy, and that energy changes others on its own accord. Not that you go on and work hard and become a martyr in changing people, no, nothing of that sort. You simply remain in yourself, but the very energy, the purity of it, the innocence of it, the fragrance of it, goes on spreading in ripples. It reaches to all the shores of the world. Without any effort on your side, an effortless revolution starts. And the revolution is beautiful when it is effortless. When it is with effort it is violent, then you are forcing your ideas on somebody else.

Stalin killed millions of people because he was a revolutionary. He wanted to change the society, and whosoever was obstructing in any way had to be killed and removed From the way. Sometimes it happens that those who are trying to help you, they start helping even against you. They don't bother whether you want to be changed or not; they have an idea to change you. They will change -- you in spite of you. They won't listen to you. This type of revolution is going to be violent, bloody.

And a revolution cannot be violent, cannot be bloody, because a revolution has to be a revolution of love and heart. A real revolutionary never goes anywhere to change anybody. He remains rooted in himself; and people who want to be changed, they come to him. They travel from faraway lands. They come to him. The fragrance reaches to them. In subtle ways, in unknown ways, whosoever wants to change himself comes and seeks a revolutionary. The real revolutionary remains in himself, available. Like a pool of cool water. Whosoever is thirsty will seek. The pool is not going to search for you; the pool is not going to run after you. And the pool is not going to drown you because you are thirsty -- that if you don't listen then the pool will drown you.

Stalin killed so many people. Revolutionaries have been as violent as reactionaries -- and sometimes even more so.

Please don't try to do the impossible. Just change yourself. In fact that too is such an impossibility that if you can change yourself in this life, you can feel grateful. You can say. "Enough, more than enough has happened."

Don't be worried about others. They are also beings, they have consciousness, they have souls. If they want to change, nobody is hindering the path. Remain a pool of cool water. If they are thirsty they will come. Just your coolness will be the invitation your purity of water will be the attraction.

"Can I be a revolutionary and a sannyasin at once?" No. If you are a sannyasin you are revolution, not a revolutionary. You need not be a revolutionary if you are a sannyasin you are a revolution. Try to understand what I am saying. Then you don't go to change people, don't go to create any revolution anywhere. You don't plan it -- you live it. Your very style of life is revolution. Wherever you will look, wherever you will touch, there will be revolution. Revolution will become just like breathing -- spontaneous.

Another Sufi story I would like to tell you:

A well-known Sufi was asked. "What is invisibility?" and he said, "I shall answer that when an opportunity for a demonstration occurs." -- Sufis don't talk much. They create situations. They don't say much; they show through situations. So the Sufi said, "Whenever an opportunity occurs, I will give you a demonstration" --

Some time later, that man and the one who had asked him the question were stopped by a band of soldiers, and the soldiers said, "We have orders to take all dervishes into custody, for the king of this country says that they will not obey his commands and that they say things which are not welcome to the tranquillity of thought of the populace. So we are going to imprison all the Sufis." -- Whenever there is a really religious person, a revolution, the politicians become very much afraid, because his very presence maddens them. His very presence is enough to create a chaos. His very presence is enough to create a disorder, a death to the old society. His very presence is enough to create a new world. He becomes a vehicle. Absent, completely absent as far as his ego is concerned, he becomes a vehicle of the divine. The rulers, the cunning people, have always been afraid of religious people because there cannot be more danger than a religious person. They are not afraid of revolutionaries, because their strategies are the same. They are not afraid of revolutionaries, because they use the same language, their terminology is the same. They are the same people; they are not different people.

Just go to New Delhi and watch the politicians. All the politicians who are in power and all the politicians who are not in power -- they are all the same people. Those who are in power seem to be reactionaries because they have attained power now they want to protect it. Now they want to keep it in their hands, so they seem to be the establishment. Those who are not in power -- they talk about revolution because they want to throw out those who are in power. Once they are in power they will become the reactionaries, and the people who were in power, who were thrown out of power, they will become the revolutionaries.

A successful revolutionary is a dead revolutionary, and a ruler thrown out of his power becomes a revolutionary. And they go on deceiving the people. Whether you choose those who are in power or those who are not in power, you are not choosing different people. You are choosing the same people. They have different labels, but there is not a bit of difference.

A religious person is a real danger. His very being is dangerous, because he brings through him new worlds --

The soldiers surrounded the Sufi and his disciple, and they said they are in search of Sufis, all Sufis have to be imprisoned, because the king has commanded so, saying that they say things which are not welcome and they create such thought patterns which are not good for the tranquillity of the populace.

And the Sufi said, "And so you should...." -- And the Sufi said to the soldiers, "And so you should" --

"... for you must do your duty."

"But are you not Sufis?" said the soldiers.

"Test us." said the Sufi.

The officer took out a Sufi book. "What is this?" he said.

The Sufi looked at the title page and said, "Something which I will burn in front of you since you have not already done so." He set light to the book, and the soldiers rode away satisfied.

The Sufi's companion asked, "What was the purpose of that action?"

"To make us invisible," said the Sufi. "for to the man of the world, visibility means that you are looking like something or someone he expects you to resemble. If you look different, your true nature becomes invisible to him."

A religious man lives a life of revolution, but invisible -- Because to become visible is to become gross, to become visible is to come to the lowest rung of the ladder. A religious person, a sannyasin, creates a revolution in himself and remains invisible. And that invisible source of energy goes on doing miracles.

Please, if you are a sannyasin there is no need to be a revolutionary you are already a revolution. And I say a revolution because a revolutionary is already dead, a revolutionary already has fixed ideas -- a revolutionary already has a mind. I say revolution it is a process. A sannyasin has no fixed ideas: he lives moment to moment. He responds to the reality of the moment -- not out of fixed ideas.

Just watch. Talk to a communist and you will see that he is not listening. He may be nodding his head, but he is not listening. Talk to a Catholic, he is not listening. Talk to a Hindu, he is not listening. While you are talking he is preparing his answer -- from his old, past, fixed ideas. You can even see on the face there is no response, a dullness and deadness. Talk to a child he listens, he listens attentively. If he listens at all he listens attentively. If he does not listen then he is absolutely absent, but he is total. Talk to a child and you will see the response, pure and fresh.

A sannyasin is like a child, innocent. He does not live out of his ideas: he is not a slave to any ideology. He lives out of consciousness, he lives out of awareness. He acts here-now! He has no yesterdays and he has no tomorrows, only today.

When Jesus was crucified, one thief, who was at his side, said to him. "We are criminals. We are crucified, that's okay -- we can understand. You look innocent. But I am happy just to be crucified with you. I am tremendously happy. I have never done anything good."

He had completely forgotten something. When Jesus was born, Jesus' parents were escaping from the country because the king had ordered a mass murder of all the children born in a certain period. The king had come to know from his wise men that a revolution is going to be born and there is going to be danger. It is better to prevent it beforehand, take precaution. So he had ordered a mass murder. Jesus' parents were escaping.

One night they were surrounded by a few thieves and robbers -- this thief was one of that group -- and they were going to rob and kill them. But this thief looked at the child Jesus, and he was so beautiful, and he was so innocent, so pure, as if purity itself... and a certain glow was surrounding him. And he stopped the other thieves, and he said. "Let them go. Just look at the child." And they all looked at the child: and they all were in a certain hypnosis. They couldn't do what they wanted to do... and they left them.

This was the thief who had saved Jesus, but he was not aware that this is the same man. He said to Jesus, "I don't know what I have done, because I have never done a good deed. You cannot find a greater criminal than me. My whole life was that of si -- robbery, murder, and everything you can imagine. But I am happy. I am thankful to God that I am dying by the side of such an innocent man."

Jesus said. "Just because of this gratefulness, you will be in the kingdom of God with me TODAY."

Now, after that statement, Christian theologians have been continuously discussing what he meant by "today." He simply meant now. Because a religious man has no yesterdays, no tomorrows, only today. This moment is all. When he said to the thief, "Today you will be with me in the kingdom of God,'' in fact he was saying, "Look! You are already. This very moment, by your gratefulness, by your recognition of purity and innocence -- by your repentance -- the past has disappeared. We are in the kingdom of God."

A religious man lives not out of past ideologies, ideas, fixed concepts, philosophies. He lives in this moment. Out of his consciousness he responds. He is always fresh like a fresh spring, always fresh, uncorrupted by the past.

So, if you are a sannyasin, you are a revolution. A revolution is greater than all the revolutionaries. Revolutionaries are those who have stopped somewhere the river has become frozen, it flows no more. A sannyasin is always flowing the river never stops -- it goes on and on, flowing and flowing. A sannyasin is a flow.

Chapter-2

THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI

The mind is very clever

First Question